London Pride Parade ★★★★★ FREE


This is an iconic London event and wonderful way to spend the day in London.  Community groups, corporation employees, the armed services and police forces are all displaying their pride. From serious political commentary to just plain silly fun, there is something for everyone and who doesn’t enjoy collecting all the goodies thrown out from the various floats? Sweets, pens, wristbands and other loot keeps on coming and encourages onlookers to hang in for over four hours it takes for the parade to pass.

Reviewed by J.C.

 Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Last Reviewed: July 2020
Regent Street and Trafalgar Square
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
https://prideinlondon.org
Map & Location: Regent St, London, UK

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King of Pangea ★★ King's Head Theatre | Jun 7 - Jul 6, 2025

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When Sam Crow's mother is ill, she is constantly positive. She is always looking forward to things being better. It is an optimism that the young Sam adopts, but when his mother dies, it leaves him uncertain about how to adjust to that situation. Then, he remembers the tale his mother used to tell him about the island of Pangea, a wonderful mythical place; he thinks about that land and wonders if the means of sorting out his complex emotions about her loss might be found there. King of Pangea is a slight fable about loss and reconciliation to the reality of death, but it never really works. The rather forced metaphor about finding the final piece of the puzzle and the journey to the fabled land all fall rather flat. A major issue is that this doesn't seem like a fully thought-out fantasy place, and the whole sequence about the magic coins fails to resonate. Luring an audience into an imaginative construct is never an easy task, and in this case, Pangea simply doesn't engag...
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This Is My Family ★★★★ Southwark Playhouse, Elephant | May 23 - Jul 12, 2025

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The title is simple and straightforward, and that says it all about this musical in which young Nicky recounts the story of her family. Her sixteen-year-old brother Matt is a Goth who is in love for the first time. Her grandmother May is starting to lose her memory. Father Steve is going through a middle-age crisis and is trying to recapture his youth while facing the prospects of a new job. Aunt Sian has yet another new man in her life, and Yvonne, Nicky's under-appreciated and overwhelmed mother, is desperately trying to hold both herself and the family together. There is nothing particularly new here, and the characters are all fairly well-known to us. But sometimes, it is the very predictability of the people and the familiarity of the plot that provides what we are looking for. The romcom's plot is trite, and we know the adventure film is going to end with the triumph of good over evil, but if done well, they can be very satisfying. This Is My Family has a story that echo...
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Elephant ★★★★★ Menier Chocolate Factory | May 22 - Jun 28, 2025

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Many one-person shows are representative of an increasingly popular genre - the theatre of personal catharsis. Elephant written, composed and performed by Anoushka Lucas is no exception, but it is a truly first rate example of its type. Lucas' character, Lylah, is the child of Indian, Cameroonian, French and English heritage who strives to come to terms with the issues of race and class that form the context of her socialisation and ambivalent sense of self. As an individual she is brought up to assimilate into a white middle-class society, but as a professional musician she is faced with an industry that wants to accentuate her race and working-class roots, denying the complexity of who she is. Lylah's struggle with issues of self-acceptance becomes tangled into her desperate desire to be accepted by others as she attempts to become an individual who is not defined by the racial and class lenses that both she, and others, constantly see her through. Indeed, her brief ponderin...
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Here We Are ★★★★ National Theatre | Until June 28, 2025

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Stephen Sondheim and Luis Buñuel is not a pairing that immediately comes to mind, but Sondheim's last work is an adaptation of two of Buñuel's films to the stage. The first act of Here We Are references The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and the second act is a riff on Buñuel's earlier film, The Exterminating Angel . The first act deals with a spoilt set of upper class New Yorkers trying to find a place for brunch and is an allegorical parody of capitalism's despoilment of the planet. It is far from subtle, but the piece is enlivened and enriched by Sondheim's signature musical tropes and his clever lyrics. The second act is even darker than the first, with the group of friends trapped in the embassy of a fictitious Latin American country. Here the questions raised are existential rather than political, and we don't have Sondheim's music to lighten the didacticism. While it can be argued that this is a thematic choice, the absent score is definitely mis...
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Our Cosmic Dust ★★★ Park Theatre | Jun 2 - Jul 5, 2025

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This gentle fable about a child who is mourning the loss of his father won three prizes at Japan's Yomiuri Theatre Awards in 2024. For that original production, Michinari Ozawa not only wrote, directed and did the set design, but he also starred in the show. It is quite an extraordinary achievement. Our Cosmic Dust tells the story of a young boy, Shotaro, who is equally precocious. When he questions his mother as to what has happened to his late father, she says he has become a star. This causes Shotaro to withdraw and become silent, as he ponders the meaning of her explanation. He then sets out on a quest which not only interrogates the notion of an afterlife, but also questions the very place of humanity in the universe. These metaphysical and cosmological themes are beautifully expounded in the story, with Shotaro being represented by a puppet operated against a stunning set which makes use of some delightful LED display imagery. Indeed, this is a show that has an extraordinary...
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The Frogs ★★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | May 23 - Jun 28, 2025

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This updating of Aristophanes' play maintains much the same plot as the original with the god Dionysos and his slave Xanthias going on a quest to Hades to bring back Athens' greatest playwright to provide guidance to the polity in troubled times. In the original, the pair intend to bring back Euripides from the dead, but in this rewrite the object of their quest is George Bernard Shaw. After an amusing crossing of the river Styx with a stoned Charon, the second act sees the pair in hell with Dionysos judging a poetry slam between GBS and Shakespeare to determine which author could best help the world in addressing its political and social issues. (In the original this contest was Euripides versus Aeschylus.) The current show is rife with lots of puns and pop-culture humour, and Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane's adaptation produces suitably manic mayhem while Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics cleverly parody various familiar tunes. The cast brings tremendous enthusiasm ...
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House of Games ★★★ Hampstead Theatre | May 2 - Jun 7, 2025

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The Comedy About Spies ★★★★★ Noël Coward Theatre | Until September 5, 2025

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